Muse by Craig Ranapia

The thing is, the Yamato wasn’t just any battleship. It was the pride of the fleet, and promoted by the wartime government as the very symbol of an aggressive modern Japan. Yamato was an ancient name for Japan, and for the dominant Japanese ethnic group. Its sinking was a crucial symbolic moment in the war, and it's been freighted with cultural significance ever since, perhaps more so even than Hiroshima.

Thus, the 1970s Battleship Yamato anime, in which the battleship is sent on a final mission to save the world, has layers of meaning for the Japanese. It plays with disturbing imagery, and it questions the popular image of a redeemed Japan emerging from the ashes of war. It’s one of the most popular anime series ever made.

Erm… end lecture. The live action remake does look crap, of course.

Erm… end lecture.

Please don’t – it was shiny. I just have a weak spot for cheesy SF apocalypses set to Steven Tyler power ballards. Armageddon, sigh…

It's "Palme d'Or," not "Palm D'Or."

Also, what do you have against Malick and von Trier?

Also, what do you have against Malick and von Trier?

Malick’s films are a succession of astoundingly beautiful images that end up being much less than the sum of their parts. As for von Trier – well, I can really do without the increasingly sour and nasty misogyny. At least the interminable Saw franchise is a no-bullshit exercise in torture porn for fun and profit.

Or more tersely: Malick is a bore and von Trier is repugnant. I know a lot of people beg to differ on both scores, and if anyone is interested in a guest post on The Tree of Life and Melancholia drop me a line. Since it's exceedingly unlikely the New Zealand Film Festival trust has an open-ended comp in the mail, I'm paying my own way and don't see the point of seeing (or writing about) films by directors I'm totally unsympathetic to.

Breaking the Waves kicked my ass so much that I have never been able to bring myself to watch another of von Trier's films (or hear 'Life on Mars' without thinking of poor Emily Watson). I am a wimp. Or someone with a finely tuned instinct for self-preservation.

I am VEDDY VEDDY excited by: Taxi Driver, Metropolis, Nosferatu, and La Dolca Vita, because I am a repertory/restoration whore. I'm also a documentary whore, but so many of them nowadays are shown on DVD at the Sky City Theatre (particularly the music ones) that it rather bums me out - it isn't Film Festivally enough. I'd rather just rent those and watch them at home with more - I mean some - no, I mean ANY - leg room. ( Cave of Forgotten Dreams being the exception here.)

Just wondering - Do Chch film Society members, if they venture North or South, get the same discounts as 'home' FS members for the respective festivals? And any thought of FS members in other centres providing accommodation for such film refugees?
(Sorry - can't oblige myself - we already have rellies coming)

At one point in Hobo With A Shotgun, Rutger Hauer's character begs on a sidewalk with the sign I AM TIRED NEED $ FOR LAWNMOWER - particularly compelling, since both of those statements apply to me at the moment.

Emily Watson

Still one of the most astonishing performances I've ever seen - at a Festival screening, too. Haunting. And an Oscar best actress nomination for her first movie role.

Just wondering - Do Chch film Society members, if they venture North or South, get the same discounts as 'home' FS members for the respective festivals?

I believe that's always been the case, but will double check.

Leopold:

Tweet from @nzff:

As long as it's a full membership, they can get the Film Society ticket price at other Festival locations.

Hope that helped.

Thanks

It's "Palme d'Or," not "Palm D'Or."

Actually, didn't you mean, "Facepalme d'Or?"

I'll be lining up to sit in Skycity Theatre's very uncomfortable seats, because some of those documentaries do look great, and I find I don't get around to obtaining and close watching them on DVD.

I'm gleefully enjoying the "what would you say to a doco in 3D..." *wince* "... by Werner Herzog?" *sudden interest* conversations.

Others on my still to be radically trimmed longlist include A Boatload of Wild Irishmen, Sons of Perdition, Better this World, Hot Coffee, Page One, Mana Waka, Position of the Stars, Miss Representation, Project Nim, Buck and Guilty Pleasures.

Neither Tree or Life or Melancholia interest me.

I'm still trying to figure out if I'll enjoy Spaceship Battleship Yamoto. I'll disappoint my stepdad by not wanting to see Metropolis again, or Nosferatu. I'd rather see Troll Hunters and Arrietty - I read all the Borrower books as a kid. And maybe Mill on the Cross.

Meek's Cutoff is already on my definite list, and She Monkeys and Tomboy.

I have a genius for picking sad films to go to, to try and escape that I want to see Happy, Happy, but not My Joy. The Giants, Kid with a Bike, the Acacias, and Attenberg have caught my attention.

My mother wants to see Mysteries of Lisbon. I'm just boggled that it has an interval! Very sensible, but I feel like taking teenagers to it and quavering about "when I was a child".

I’ll wait for Arrietty (first touted as “The Borrower Arrietty”) to come out with English dialogue..and see if anyone in the family has access to a 3D player for “The Cave of Forgotten Dreams” (archaeologists have been raving about it! And I have all the books available in English on Chauvet!) before buying both as dvds-

Others on my still to be radically trimmed longlist include A Boatload of Wild Irishmen,

Walked into a pub?

I’ll wait for Arrietty (first touted as “The Borrower Arrietty”) to come out with English dialogue

Which reminds me - why is it that people are happy to watch foreign-language cartoons dubbed into English, but turn their noses up at the same for live-action films? The English script still has to be written and spoken to fit the voice moments of the original language.

Having said that, cute French animation A Cat in Paris is screening at the festival with both English-dubbed and subtitled versions.

…four and a half hour Mysteries of Lisbon sound like great fun.

Four and a half hours!
But yes, it does sound good. Will have to check that out.

As for von Trier, I hated Dancer in the Dark, but I suppose I should give his films another shot. Melancholia seems like as good a film as any to try.

Which reminds me - why is it that people are happy to watch foreign-language cartoons dubbed into English, but turn their noses up at the same for live-action films?

When I tooking the younglings to see Ponyo, the only screening that worked was the Japanese ;anguage version amd I had some concerns. When I warned them that there would be some reading involved, I got the cutest "oh, listen to the old man being lame " eye-rolls. :)

Which reminds me - why is it that people are happy to watch foreign-language cartoons dubbed into English, but turn their noses up at the same for live-action films?

Well, the cartoons are by definition already dubbed. Those animated characters can't really speak by themselves. Real actors can. Still, I'm happier with subtitles myself.

Along the lines of wanting to see stuff, and the money thing, one of the things I mean to do every year is rock along to the Documentary Festival wit a couple of my friends who do that whole "20 films in 2 weeks" thing. And every year, I do not. So imagine my joy and pleasure to look at my Listener this morning, and see, that on TVOne, very late at night. next week they will be showing Bloody Dirty Hippies, which was one of the very docos I was itching to see. FTW!

Ever since I first read about Terence Malick's Tree of Life I've been wondering with increasing irritation why it's never mentioned that Patrick White wrote the novel.

Until today, when it suddenly dawned on me that Patrick White's (excellent) book is called Tree of Man.

Ah well, brain rot...